The aim of this research is to explore the managerial role of category managers in
purchasing. A network management perspective is adopted. A case based research
methodology is applied, and three category managers managing a diverse set of
component and service categories in a global production firm is observed while
providing accounts of their progress and results in meetings. We conclude that the
network management classification scheme originally developed by Harland and Knight
(2001) and Knight and Harland (2005) is a valuable and fertile theoretical framework
for the analysis of the role of the category manager in purchasing.

Keywords Supply Chain Management, Risk Management, Supply Chain Risk Management
Abstract To comply with Supply Chain Management dogma companies have cut their inventories
to a minimum, lead times have been shortened, new suppliers have been chosen and the customer
portfolio has been reduced. All of these activities impose a great deal of risk on the firms,
jeopardizing the survival of entire supply chains. In this article the author intends to investigate
and document the use and meaning of Risk and Uncertainty within journals publishing material on
Supply Chain Management and Logistics. Subsequently suggestions for further research are
proposed – the integration of Risk Management into the discipline of Supply Chain Design.

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This paper aims at describing network dynamics through the lenses of modularity.
Different types of networks exist as ways of coping with the dynamics of industry
demands that are based on modular product architectures. In order to distinguish
between different types of mechanisms in which networks (operating with modular
product architectures may) evolve, two types of networks are introduced: ‘marketdriven
product architecture network’ (i.e., when the industrial network is driven by
product architecture that is controlled by the market) and ‘firm-driven product
architecture network’ (when the industrial network is driven by product architecture
that is controlled by the firm). The history of the technological development of
bicycle, since 1890s to 1990s, illustrates how the bicycle industry survived two cycles
of disaggregation-concentration.

Purpose: This research explores the resilience domain, which is important in the field of supply chain
management; it investigates the effects relational competencies have for resilience and the effect
resilience, in turn, has on a supply chain’s customer value.
Design/methodology/approach: The research is empirical in nature and employs a confirmatory approach that builds on the relational
view as a primary theoretical foundation. It utilizes survey data collected from manufacturing firms
from three countries, which is analyzed using structural equation modeling.
Findings: It is found that communicative and cooperative relationships have a positive effect on resilience, while
integration does not have a significant effect. It is also found that improved resilience, obtained by
investing in agility and robustness, enhances a supply chain’s customer value.
Practical implications: Some findings contrast the expectations derived from theory. Particularly, practitioners can learn that
integration has a limited role in enhancing resilience.
Originality/value:
The study distinguishes between a proactive and reactive dimension of resilience: robustness and
agility. The relational view serves as the theoretical basis to explain the effects between three types of
relational competencies (communication, cooperation, and integration) and the above-mentioned two
dimensions of resilience.

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Lessons learned from testing a prototype combining talent development and leadership innovation in a Scandinavian hospital setting

Ingerslev, Karen; Bjørn, Kasper; Johansen, Jørgen(, 2012)

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Abstract:

This paper addresses the potential clash between the “non-failure” culture of the hospital and
the “fail-fast-forward” approach of innovation by sharing and analysing narratives from a
field study of innovation processes. The case is a large university hospital in Scandinavia and
the health care sector in general is outlined as context of the challenges addressed by the innovation
processes. The narratives fall into three overlapping categories; the product, the
process and the culture of innovation. Regarding the product of innovation, we outline the
lessons learned about tensions created by ambitions of radical innovation in a public sector
context, challenged by the idea of small-scale experiments and the participant’s feelings of
inferiority. As for the process of innovation: we share the lessons learned about how linear
and non-linear thinking affects the process of innovation. Addressing the culture of innovation,
we discuss the lessons learned from working with a prototype testing approach in a system
characterized by an evidence-based non-failure culture. Finally we summarize the lessons
learned and share concluding perspectives.

The City of Lausanne and the Canton de Vaud asked TSE Consulting to prepare a
report giving specific consideration to the business development possibilities for
a proposed sports cluster development project. This report is a supplement to
previous reports and other studies being commissioned on this topic.
This report has been developed over five weeks during January and February
2014. It was prepared by TSE Consulting in Lausanne with input from TSE
Academic Advisor, Troels Troelsen, an Associate Professor of Sports Economics at
Copenhagen Business School. Information for this report was drawn from
interviews, desk research and existing documents, combined with TSE
Consulting’s experience of working with sports cities around the world.
The Olympic Capital sports cluster already exists and as such this report focuses
on providing some key points which will assist in the further development and
enhancement of the existing cluster.
The report starts with a background and understanding of the cluster as it is
today and then provides some key ideas to the further development of the sports
cluster in the Olympic Capital. The report provides a definition of a cluster and
outlines some of the pros and cons of an industry cluster for the organisations
that are operating within them. The key ideas for ensuring that the future
development of the cluster is successful are described and a starting point is
provided for the next step to take for each point.
Final comments are then made in relation to the proposed cluster and the case
studies that have been developed in relation to the cluster are outlined in the
Appendices.
The idea of the cluster is a very exciting start of a new expansion of the sport
sector in Lausanne / Canton de Vaud. This report aims to provide ideas and
background to kick start the development with very concrete recommendations
so that the implementation can start over the coming months.

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What does it mean to be innovative in public organizations? Scholars and policy
makers call for public sector organizations to become innovative, whether this is
through increasing collaboration, exploring networks or recognizing the
innovation that occurs in government. This study contributes to this discussion a
critical perspective arguing that much of the innovation that occurs in public
organizations may come about in ways that are intentionally silenced by the
organization and therefore dependent on the tactical creation of space for everyday
creativity. It does so through an 18-month ethnographic study informed by
Foucault’s concepts of governmentality and discourse, as well as his history of the
emergence of police within the state, and by De Certeau’s theory of everyday
practice and metaphor of the city.

The focus of this thesis is ”Quality Leadership in Danish Hospitals” and the conditions for good
quality development on the operational level. Within this framework it is the objective of the thesis
in three selected hospitals, geographically spread over the country, to investigate the view of the
concept “quality” among department leaders from five referral centers and its impact on the
department's quality work. The overall quality concept in the three hospitals is based on two
different leadership technologies: Total Quality Management and Accreditation. Two of the
hospitals have applied the TQM model as leadership technology but use the method in different
ways. The third hospital applies Accreditation. Accordingly the three hospitals have organized in
separate ways.....

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Exploring some benefits of constraints on creativity and aesthetic value creation

Frandsen, Thomas; Friis, Ivar; Hansen, Allan(Frederiksberg, 2011)

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Abstract:

This paper explores the role of budgeting in the Danish film industry and seeks to illustrate the
positive effects a line-budget might have on the creativity and innovativeness in film production. In
our analysis we provide illustrative examples of the enabling and facilitating role of budget
constraints on film production from the Danish film industry in general as well as from a case study
of the process of making the Danish film “The Island of Lost Souls” in particular. We draw on
Elster (2000)’s constraint theory and suggest that the constraints imposed on agents by line-item
budgeting under some circumstances lead to situations where ‘less is more’ as line-item budgeting
might be used to focus creative behavior as well as pre-commit the agent against passion and time
inconsistency.

Many studies have focused on the topic of product innovation. As a key element
of how industrial organisations work, of how competition is shaped and how
economic growth is realised, innovation provides an interesting research field,
which will never be fully explored. Industrial organisations explore these grounds
through strategic processes in which objectives should guide product development
processes. Ideas, alternatives or decisions form these processes in which
heterogeneous actors need to be aligned and coordinated towards the final product
innovation. Heterogeneity is a key aspect here; different, new technologies,
conflicting objectives, different opinions and different management practices for
example, are part of this process. Although these elements have been studied
extensively in extant research, I identify several gaps in the existing literature,
which I in turn strive to fill with this thesis. First, a perspective of the interactions
in innovation processes is needed with a focus on control mechanisms and the
mobilisation of strategic objectives. Secondly, focusing on control, the way calculative boundaries are created and explored and how these may be overcome
needs more development and empirical insights. Thirdly, the interaction of control
mechanisms and the coordination of product development networks through these
interactions lack empirical insights and build an interesting research ground. I do
not provide a holistic framework or a contingent perspective of how organisations
should manage innovation. Rather I discuss the many ways in which product
development networks become convergent through the interaction of control
mechanisms, which may act as a vehicle or translator of strategic objectives...

Using a systematic review of the last 55 years of research within risk management this paper explores how
risk management as a management technology (methodologies, tools and frameworks to mitigate or manage
risks) singles out risks as an object for management in order to make action possible. The paper synthesise
by developing a framework of how different views on risk management enable and constrain the knowledge
about risk and thus frame the possibilities to measure, analyse and calculate uncertainty and risk. Inspired by
social studies of finance and accounting, the paper finally develops three propositions that illustrate how the
framing of risk establishes a boundary for how managers might understand value creation and the possible
future and how this impacts the possible responses to risk.

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This dissertation proposes a new perspective on management of design by
regarding it as a translation process, using a framework based on Actor-
Network Theory. Within the field of management of design, design has been defined as a problem-solving activity, a tool for either improving the decisionmaking process or for fostering radical innovation by making sense of things.
Designers have generally been considered individuals with a different sensibility, able to make a difference by producing interesting and intriguing products which can deliver value to the customers and create value for the firm. Actor-Network Theory is a methodology for the socio-technical analysis that treats the actors as enacted and relational, and explores the network creation through an analysis based on a flat ontology, in which there is symmetry between human- and non-human actors. There is no a priori size, power or complexity of the actors, as these elements are built through the relations and understood by following them. The study is based on an ethnographic investigation of three design objects: the Serie7, the Egg (designed respectively in 1955 and 1958) and the Ice (designed in 2002), manufactured by Fritz Hansen. Based on the analysis, a new interpretation of the design, the design process, the role of the managers and designers, the value creation process, and the role of technologies of managing is presented.
Design is defined as an outcome of the construction process of things made by mobilising and enrolling actors through the translations of goals. The design process is the process of enrolling, mobilising, and translating goals, creating the design in a heterogeneous network of allies. It is a chaotic practice, muddled and contingent, with the inevitable risk of unintended consequences.
This process is guided by the managers, who act as spokespersons, while the designers are macro-actors, representing all the actors involved in the creation process, in the multitude making or agreeing on the final decisions
concerning the design and its development during the life cycle of the object. The individual qualities of insight, intuition, vision, and creativity are reinterpreted and assembled in the language of the design. These qualities are no longer the properties of an individual, but collective virtues in relation to which governing and managing have a fundamental role. The managers are spokespersons, actors who translate the needs, the expectations, the demands and the desires from different actors. They work towards sharing the goals by encouraging the other actors to adhere to the programme of actions.
The value is constituted and forged through the relationships, it is not something that is proper or embedded in the product, but is adopted and adapted by the allies in the network. The technologies of managing are not simple tools for fostering creativity, as described in the previous literature, they are actors mediating the process and conveying information that managers can use to make decisions. The technologies of managing are identified as black boxes and leaky black boxes. A black box is totally closed, a leaky black box is something the managers are working and acting on, stimulating the translations and actions that are shaping the network, including or cutting off the network actors and features, as well as mobilising actors.

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Company performance is increasingly affected by a range of external factors embedded
in a complex network of action controlled by other companies’ in its environment. A well
managed company, it’s argued, is one that is aware of these external factors, and one who
in response seeks to implement tactics maximizing own influence and control over them.
Information gathering and model building are tactics normally used in this effort.
However, in this article we discuss a third tactic, the tactic of attraction in dyadic
relationships. Founded on the theory of social exchange and based on literature reviews
on long-term-orientation in relationships and relationship value we develop a conceptual
model highlighting the components of attraction in business to business relationships.
First we demonstrate how the force of attraction can be understood as partners expected
relationship value and how expected relationship value in turn is strengthened or
weakened by partner- comfortability and dependability. Then we show how partners
perceived attraction towards an industrial company can be managed using a combination
of structural- and behavioral adjustments.
Key words: Inter-organizational relationships; Relationship Management; Relationship-value;
Attraction.

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The world is increasingly turbulent with shorter and shorter technological life cycles and
more and more frequent changes in customer demand. This situation implies that flexibility
and agility are crucial for producers of products and services. Much effort has been directed
toward understanding innovation and the ways in which management can increase the value
of innovation efforts. As a consequence, suggestions emphasizing different aspects of
innovation and creativity have been put forward. However, the value of architectural
knowledge for innovation is increasingly recognized as crucial with modular architectures
proposed as one way of increasing the rate of innovation by introducing flexibility and agility
without sacrificing efficiency.
Modularity is a way to design a system with the intent of reducing its complexity by
decomposing the system and reducing interdependencies between the subsystems of the
system through standardized interfaces. Systems designed in this way allow for greater
flexibility through recombination; however, they retain efficiency by means of
standardization and scale economies from the reuse of components. For this reason modular
architectures present an interesting solution to the dilemma of whether to invest in innovation
or in efficiency. The topic has received much attention in the face of demands from customers
for increasingly heterogeneous products and services. However, an important aspect to keep
in mind is that, while decomposition is a powerful way of reducing complexity, most real
systems remain only nearly decomposable (Simon, 1962) or loosely coupled rather than
uncoupled (Orton & Weick, 1990)....

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This study adds to business model innovation literature by exploring the adaptability
of dominant logics of corporate mindsets. The purpose is to analyze how a company
can rethink itself based on the premises of servitization: how the mindset of a manufacturer
can be reconfigured when changing the business model from product to service
innovation and adapting a service logic for its entire business. A field study was
conducted in the form of two workshops and interviews with middle-level managers
of Vestas Wind Systems, a global wind turbine manufacturer. The study indicates that
it is cognitively possible to change the business model of a manufacturing company.
Furthermore, the results showed that mindsets can be mapped, but they change depending
on the framing. Interestingly, each mindset possesses a different businesslogic,
as the components of the business model framework interact differently in a
product than a service situation.